Everything occurred too fast. Ai didn’t even have time to perceive what was happening as the last thing she heard was a mix of gasps and shrieks and one loud “Watch out!” before she shut her eyes tightly and braced herself, expectant of the imminent danger. She thought that she had passed out for a few seconds because she couldn’t hear anything but a rather loud and strained breathing which appeared to be in close proximity to her.

She slightly pinched her upper arm to make sure she hadn’t blackened out and slowly and warily opened her eyes, one by one, while becoming aware of the area around herself. The girl was confused for a moment, since her field of vision was blocked by some white fabric which she recognized as their P.E uniform t-shirt, worn by someone unmistakably taller than her. She concluded that fact because her eyes were staring at the center of someone’s chest which could from her height level solely mean that the person was at least six feet tall. And a male.

Intrigued for a moment, Ai raised her sight to discover the identity of the unknown student. Her eyes snapped wide open and her breath was halted when she found out that the person was no one other than Kim Jongin. Her lips then collected in a firm line, as she gulped in a manner of a person who’s guilty of something.

The girl was too baffled at the moment to be able to say anything clever or coherent for that matter, so she opted for peering at the ever so perfect face of her male classmate and maybe even noticing the messy bangs stuck to his sweaty forehead, his unbelievably full lips, naturally tanned skin and also the scarcely visible dark circles for which he knew existed because of the many sleepless nights of partying and playing video games.

The last thing Ai’s eyes caught was the boy’s overall expression whose meaning she couldn’t decipher quite well. It looked as he was either worried about something or taking pity on the girl for whatever reason. Ai was sure that the second option was more probable, since even she considered herself to be an easy target and incapable of defending herself of something as half-witted as a basketball launching attack.

Kai appeared as if he had something to say, but he changed his mind in the last second and ruffled Ai’s hair. While keeping firm hold on her shoulder with one hand, he brought his face closer to hers and stared in her eyes intensely.

“Be a little more careful next time. You could’ve passed out from the hit if it weren’t for me.” Kai said half-jokingly and half-seriously with a soft smile curled on his lips, before he whipped around to throw the basketball a bit too aggressively and holler just as vexed. “Are you crazy, man?! Somebody could’ve gotten hurt!”

Kris just tsked at the statement and growled threateningly when Kai punched his arm unreasonably hard for a playful punch, but with a grin that dismissed the option to be a serious one. “My back hurts, hyung, will you give me a massage to compensate for the pain?”, the tanned boy showed a faux pout and clung to Kris’s arm in attempt to furtherly annoy him.

The whole gymnasium whistled in a teasing manner and some girls squealed in unison, their brains too occupied with thinking about the imaginary romantic relationship between these two boys. The girls who were near Ai were busy with scoffing in irritation and commenting things like “Wow, don’t tell me our Kai is her target now!”, “I can’t believe this!” and “Pretending to be weak and asking to be protected seems like a good strategy, huh?”.

Ai gnashed her teeth, finding their nerves to bad-mouth her where she could clearly hear them hard to believe in. The blonde girl abruptly threw her head back to flash a glare and a plain annoyed look, to which the girls scoffed a few more times, but stopped their gossip session and avoided making eye-contact with Ai right away.

Satisfied with the effect of her silent threat, Ai grinned from ear-to-ear and turned to observe the game resuming in front of her. Only this time she had her fingers crossed behind her back, praying to the Heavens to trigger a malfunction in Kris’s nervous system, make him lose his footing and smash his stupid face against the hard and concrete floor. “Yes. That’d be about enough payback for him.”

The game had come to an end with a disappointing final result for Tao and the rest of his class. Well, he couldn’t assert that he was surprised either, since the only ones who were serious about wanting to win the game were him and a handful of other boys. Not even his remarkable talent for all kind of sports could have been enough to score more than the other team, because that’s what basketball is all about. A team.

The second factor that contributed to his own misery was Ai’s incredibly loud and obnoxious cheering after the buzzer, which signaled the end of the game, went off. She was clapping her hands in a consistent rhythm, chanting “It’s okay. It’s okay. Tao’s still the best”. It was needless to say that it made him want to go berserk right on the spot, but he sealed up his ears with his fingers instead and marched towards the showers with the rest of the male students.

On the other side, Ai was struck with realization that the class was finally over and that she needed to duck out of the gym at any cost. She reflexively searched for Kyungsoo with her eyes, but when she came to her senses, she became aware of the fact that such thing was completely unnecessary since they were supposed to take leave separately for that day anyway.

The agitated girl figured out that she would first need to make her departure in an unnoticed way so she wouldn’t get caught by the teacher for whom she was sure hasn’t forgotten about the wretched punishment he concocted just for her. She sprang towards the only feasible escape route that led way to the girls’ changing rooms and showers, only to be stopped by a sudden clasp on her wrist, halting her right in her tracks.

Ai needn’t to look at the person who was currently in control of her body since it was more than obvious as to who it was. She stiffly shifted her head to the side to come eye to eye with the pissed teacher. Eunhyuk tightened up the grip on her hand and queried impatiently. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Ai just laughed apprehensively in return and replied with an another question. “To look for y-you?” She then tapped his shoulder with her free hand and beamed loudly. “And look at that, you’re right here!”

Eunhyuk scowled at her and mockingly imitated her laughter, having enough of her elusive behaviour. He let go of her hand afterwards, but nonetheless kept his glaring eyes firmly fixated on hers. “I’m going to go now. If I find out you’ve avoided your duties and defied my orders you’ll be taking a stroll to the principal’s office tomorrow, got it?”

“Yes, sir!” Ai exclaimed in a irritatingly loud voice while gesturing a military salute pose, for which she earned herself a flick to the forehead from Eunhyuk. The teacher then started lumbering backwards, slowly fathering away from Ai whilst keeping his gaze intact with hers and index finger menacingly pointed at her, in hope to scare her out of her wits with the gesture.

That apparently wasn’t so effective since Ai was giving the teacher a blank look and judging eyes, regarding him as the biggest idiot on the face of the Earth. When he disappeared out of her sight along with all the students, Ai her axis to scrutinize how big her load of work was and calculate the approximate amount of time she would need to get it all done.

“Alright then, the sooner I start, the sooner I can go home!” Ai clapped her hands determinedly and decided to begin with putting all the heavy equipment away. It took her more time and strength for the job than she had initially thought it would, since, as usual, the students had randomly been pulling out different gym equipment and not really using it at all later. After she was done with the hardest part of the work, Ai wiped away the sweat dewed on her forehead with her sleeve and released an exhausted breath. The remaining thing to do now was putting all the balls previously used in the ball container.

Such a simple task could’ve been done in an equally simple way, but Ai had another thing planned in her mind. Not wanting to waste any more time and energy on going back and forth to the storage room to transfer the balls, she opted for picking up as much balls as her arms could carry and scurrying over to her designed spot.

The only thing Ai didn’t take into consideration was that she wouldn’t be able to see ahead of herself because of the balls which were crammed up in her arms. She